It’s such a liberating feeling when you realize you’re too cool for school.
Just don’t let it all go to your fat head, you tool…
“Boy, howdy! I’m not exactly looking forward to the end of this semester and having to go do fieldwork in a real classroom…” I mused to myself.
‘Twas the second day of another beautiful fall semester on the campus of Kansas State University, and I found myself heading into my fourth (but not final) year of higher education. Having finally settled on a career as a high school physics teacher after a bit of floundering, I was at long last moving past all the education theory classes, and was now starting to take classes that required me to apply that theory in the real world.
And so there I sat in Teaching In The Real World 501,1Not the real name of the class. I’ve long since blocked out that part of my memory. letting my mind float adrift my stream of consciousness instead of listening to what our Education educator was saying.
“Ugh…I guess I’m not really looking forward student teaching after I come back from semester abroad in the spring either…”
Honestly, I wasn’t even really thinking about what I was thinking; I was just along for the ride. Had I been more thoughtful about my thoughts, though, then I probably would have seen where this was all inevitably headed, and shut the whole internal monologue down before I reached any crazy conclu–
“Oh, sh*t. I don’t want to teach ever.”
Dammit. It was too late. Crazy conclusion: reached. I sat there stunned about what had transpired in the matter of mere seconds in my head. My subconscious had taken the liberty of going and blowing up my carefully crafted plans, and now I was left to pick up the pieces.
“No, no, no, no! This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening,” I muttered as teetered on the edge of nervous breakdown.
You gotta understand that I am notoriously bad about figuring out what I want to do with my life (both then and now), and the idea of being an international physics teacher extraordinaire2I had hatched the scheme to teach at American schools abroad, with the goal of teaching on all seven continents. was something of a security blanket for me. I “knew” what ----- wanted me to do, and it was just a matter of following down that path. Easy-peasy, lemon-squeezy!
Well, at least that was the case up until a few moments prior to my little impromptu Let’s-Get-Real-With-Ourselves therapy session/career intervention. Now it felt like my whole world and the vision I had of my future self had all been blown to smithereens.
Basically about halfway through the class period I was curled up in the corner, hugging my knees to my chest, rocking back and forth just muttering to myself and gently sobbing.
But then, being the eternal optimist that I was, I caught a brief glimpse a silver lining: if I wasn’t going to be a physics teacher, then I didn’t have to take no more stinkin’ high-level physics classes. In fact, just the day before I had attended my session of Advanced Physics Lab, and I was already dreading spending an entire semester trudging through many of the classic physics discoveries and then re-inventing the wheel in the from of lab reports.
Oh-ho! But not any more, mother fuckers! I had just given myself a Get Out Of Jail Free card, and I just couldn’t wait until the next day when I could drop out of that nonsense in person…
“What’s up, suckers?!?” I waltzed into Advanced Physics Lab with a smug sh*t-eating grin on my face.
I knew something that my soon-to-be-erstwhile classmates didn’t: they were going to be stuck wiling their lives away for 6 hours a week for the next 18 weeks in this G0d-forsaken wasteland, while I would be cruising through Meteorology 101, well on my way to a totally 100% real–and totally 100% useless–Bachelor’s degree in Physical Science. For all y’all non-mathematicians out there, that’s a sum total of 4 1/2 days of their lives they were never gonna get back.
“Yeah, I just stopped by to let you fools hear it firsthand from me that I’m dropping this stupid ----- class, and am oh-so-sad that you will have to suffer through it alone without me by your side,” I super-casually and very cockily commented to two of my physics pals that I had previously bonded with through many a late night homework session.
Despite basically having gone through ‘Nam together, I wasn’t losing any sleep over jumping ship and abandoning them in their time of academic need.
In fact, that scene just happened to be caught on camera. Check it out for yourself:
“Wait just a moment, youngster, you might want to reconsider your hasty decision.”
I turned around to see our professor, one Dr. Cocke (his real name), looking at me slightly disappointed.
“So if you’re not going to do physics education, what are you going to do?” he asked, despite me obviously positioning my body halfway out the door.
I sighed heavily. This was really none of his bees-wax.
“Well, if you must know, I have almost all the courses done for a Physical Science degree. Just need a couple of Intro to Meteorology classes, and should have no problem breezing right through those,” I quipped, very obviously proud of the dumb pun I had just made.
“Physical Science?!?” he visibly scoffed. “I think you might be the first student dumb enough to actually get that degree. Do you know what kind of job you can get with that useless diploma? Bagging groceries, maybe some sort of customer service job, that’s about it. Don’t believe what they say on the website. No one is parlaying that degree to a career in Mineralogy.3https://www.k-state.edu/academics/majors-programs/physical-science-degree/”
“Well, good news then, cuz I don’t care to really do anything with that degree anyways. Screw science!” As it turned out, I could be a bit of a Cocke myself.
He just shook his head.
“Look, you do what you want with your life. I just highly encourage you to think about switching your major to Physics. You already have almost all of the classes you’d need, and even if you decide not to use it, you’ll always have that accomplishment to be proud of. It would be a shame to waste all the effort you’ve put in to get this far.”
“Bah! It’s already too late! I’ve made up my mind, and I’m going to take the easy path from here until graduation. No need to contribute an more needless suffering to this cosmic experience.”
“Okay, well do what you will,” he said, clearly having stated his piece and feeling no need to argue with the jackass in front of him.
“Thanks, I will! And what I’m gonna do right now is head out that door and never look back…”
“You might as well just take the semester off and use that time to figure your shit out.”
Well, this was not the advice I was seeking. Yet this what my dear friend and usually reliable source of wisdom, Beecher, had decided was what I needed to hear in my time of crisis. Some friend he was.
“What? No, never!” I shuddered at the mere thought of it.
“Well, you’re otherwise just wasting everyone’s time. And you’d be wasting good scholarship money that was meant to be an investment in you and society at large. Maybe it’s best that that money be spent on a more deserving student.”
Damn, he was just gonna drag my ass all afternoon, wasn’t he?
“C’mon, man, you don’t have to be so harsh. Not being a student is entirely out of the question.”
“Why’s that?” Beecher looked at me like he had some nugget of wisdom up his sleeve.
“Um…er…yeah…well, you see…aww, fudge, I don’t know, you big jerk!”
“Perhaps it’s because you’re too tied up in your identity as a student, as a scholar, and as an intellectual? Are you scared shitless at the thought of a life apart from that?”
Not wanting to face the deep dark abysses of myself, I started to open up to the alternative.
“Ok, so you’ve convinced me not just completely screw off the remainder of my college career. Do you have anything practical and helpful to stay instead of just tearing my psyche a new asshole?”
“Well, I think Dr. Cocke has a good perspective on things. You gotta take the longer view. Ya know, keep as many doors open as you can. I know you, and I know that you’re ability to grow as a person is beyond that of most people. No telling who you’ll be 5 years from now–but I can tell you that you won’t want to be cussing at your past self for getting…what was the degree again? ‘Physical Science’? C’mon man, I don’t think that’s even a real degree.”
I sighed a long and heavy sigh, as a little bit of my soul escaped with my breath.
“Dammit. I hate you. You’re right, but I don’t have to like it.”
“So…you’re going to switch your major to Physics? And of course drop your minor in Physics,4The whole while I was majoring in education, I had tacked on a minor in physics because I was taking all the required classes anyways. because I don’t think they’ll let you major and minor in the same thing. That’s just not how that works.”
“Yeah, I suppose so. Now, let’s see what classes I’ll need to take this semester.”
*checks notes*
“Oh, fudge me in the ashes.”
“What’s wrong?” Beecher asked.
“It looks like I’ll be back in Advanced Physics Lab come next Monday. I can’t show my face in there again!”
“Why not?”
“Because…you know…on account of me telling them all to go ----- themselves before walking out for what I had presumed to be forever…”
The point of the story should be a real classic this time around: don’t be a jackass and burn bridges. Sure it may feel good–hell, it can feel real good–in the moment, but I highly recommend that instead you hedge your bets. You know, keep your options open. You never know what might come your way down the road, or how you’ll grow and change and reject the many, many errors of your youthful ways.
Yes, as you have probably already guessed, I had to walk back into that physics lab with my tail and proverbial egg on my face, and let me tell you it suuuuucked. Talk about having to eat a big ol’ slice of humble pie. Ugh. I just shutter thinking about it.
All that aside, maybe the real point of the story5The original alternate ending, before I added the second point of the story at the last second, was as follows:
But what can I say? Taking the harder path was totally worth it. I don’t want to #HumbleBrag or anything, but let’s just say that no one is out there getting a Ph.D. in ‘Physical Science’… is that one should beware the dangers of letting their subconscious run free and in the wild. No! One should keep that beast reigned in and caged up tight! You give it one ounce of freedom and what happens? That little monster will blow your best laid plans right on up. In the name of ‘seeking true happiness’, that ass-hat might even do the unthinkable: rip your precious wittle security blanket to shweds.
*crowd audibly gasps*
Yeah. That’s right I said it. You’ve been warned.
Now go on now, Young Grasshopper, go forth and pursue your lofty goals for life built on a shaky understanding of yourself and your strengths and weaknesses. Nevermind that little voice in the back of your head. Pay it no attention at all…
Content created on: 14/16/17/18 August 2024 (Wed/Fri/Sat/Sun)
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